Report on the “Execution of the Right to a Fair Trial”

“Committee for Justice” published a report titled ‘Execution of the Right to a Fair Trial’. It is an analytical report for the violations that have tainted the Case known across the media as “Death of the Guard” (registered under No. 781 for the year 2014 Mansoura crimes exclusive). The report discusses and documents the violations committed against that defendants in the case of “Death of the guard of the counselor of Ettihadyya” which took place in Mansoura on 28 February 2014.

In its judgement dated 7 June 2017, the Court of Cassation affirmed the death sentence on six of the defendants, namely: Khaled Refaat Mohamed Gad Askar, Ibrahim Yahya Abdelfattah Azab, Ahmed Alwaleed Alsayed Alshal, Abdulrahman Mohamed Abdo Atteya, Bassem Mohsen Hassan Alkhareiby, and Mahmoud Mamdouh Wahba Atteya Abouzaid alongside reducing some sentences to a number of other defendants.

The report highlights and analyzes eight different patterns of violations that have been documented in the official papers of the case, beginning with the complaints of enforced disappearance that were voiced by a number of defendants to the Supreme State Security Prosecution (which conducted the case investigations), the discrepancies between the reality of circumstances and dates of their arrest with what is recorded in the official documents, passing through the incidents of torture and forced confessions under duress (which they completely withdrew later, after being transferred to public prisons away from State security detention places), the poor prison conditions, videotaping confessions under duress and their publication by the Ministry of the Interior prior to the completion of the investigations of the prosecution, the absence of lawyers of the defendants during the interrogation sessions, and the sole reliance of judgements on national security investigations as main evidence, in the conviction decision by the court, despite the reliance of all these investigations on secret sources that were never disclosed through any stage of litigation.

The report also includes the annexes to the testimonies of the violations that took place against the defendants throughout the Case, which were included in the prosecution investigation papers.

The report concludes that “Mansoura Executions Case” which encompassed mass amounts of violations – as majorly noted in many of the cases of terrorism and military trials of civilians in recent years – refuted the certainty that the authorities claim to base their judgments on, and gave rise to in six cruel death sentences.

Accordingly, the most prominent and important recommendation is the immediate cessation of the judgement and the protection of the right to life of these six-young people, and currently only the President of the Republic has the authority to interfere, in accordance with article 470 of the ‘Criminal Code Procedures’, which gives him the right to issue a presidential decision to commute their death sentence.